


take my soul and make it undone

by orphan_account



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, i have no idea sorry, what the fuck is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4317498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>my shadow tilts its head at me,</i>
</p><p>"josh has heard this story hundreds of times. he knows every detail. he could recite it from memory. still, he stays quiet and he listens every single time, because it makes him feel better about what he’s done."</p><p> <i>spirits in the dark are waiting.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	take my soul and make it undone

**Author's Note:**

> i have no fucking clue what's going on in this, so i'm going to leave it up to your imagination. <3
> 
> trigger warning for very detailed abuse.

One, two, three, four.

Four, three, two, one.

He taps his fingers against his thigh and he counts.

One, two, three, four.

Four, three, two, one.

He drags on his cigarette, blowing puffs of smoke into the air.

“What are you doing back here?” someone loud asks, and he jumps, dropping the cigarette onto the sidewalk. He looks around, wildly, heart race increasing sharply, until his eyes land on the perpetrator.

He picks up his cigarette and sticks it back in the corner of his mouth, narrowing his eyes.

“Did I scare you?” Tyler asks, and he flips him off, turning his back. His face falls, and he crosses his arms, petulantly jutting his hip out. “Don’t be like that, Josh.”

He actually sounds hurt, and Josh has the audacity to think for a second he’ll run away crying like the last time they spoke. Tyler flops down next to him on the sidewalk. Josh gazes at him thoughtfully before asking, “Where have you been?”

“Oh, you know, around,” Tyler waves a hand, gesturing for Josh’s cigarette. He hands it over.

“No, I don’t know. That’s why I asked,” Josh sighs, pulling his knees up to his chest. He allows Tyler to draw on his smoke for a few heartbeats before taking it from his hand, holding it gently between his index and middle finger.

Tyler looks out across the horizon. “What do you think is out there?”

“Past the fence?” Josh focuses his gaze, squinting.

“Mhm.”

He hums around the end of the cigarette, drawing in deep. “I don’t know,” he decides, face blank, and smoke unfurls past his lips in a thick, white-grey cloud.

“You’re no fun,” Tyler complains, voice high and whiny. It reminds Josh vaguely of a six year old, and he cringes. How long has it been since he’s seen a child? God, he misses his siblings.

“I miss my family,” Josh tells the tops of his knees.

Tyler perks up at the mention of family. “I don’t,” he declares, sullenly. He crosses one of his legs over the other, resting his hands on top of his thighs.

“I _know_ you don’t.”

Tyler shoots him a nasty look and pouts. “Can you blame me?”

Josh pauses. “No,” he says after a brief second, honestly, stubbing the end of his cigarette out against the sidewalk. “No, I really can’t.”

Tyler smiles at that. He crawls toward Josh and links an arm through his, resting his head on his shoulder. “I killed them, you know,” he crows.

“I know,” Josh rolls his eyes, but he twines their fingers together, sliding his thumb across Tyler’s skin.

“I watched the blood run out of my mother’s head when I shot her and I stabbed my father thirty-two times,” Tyler continues, squeezing Josh’s hand. “When they came to get me, one of ‘em puked on the floor when he saw his body, you know?”

“I know,” Josh repeats. He wouldn’t be able to tell anyone at gunpoint how many times he’s heard the same story, but he listens anyway, because it makes him feel that much saner. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Yup!” Tyler chirps, rubbing his nose into the fabric of Josh’s shirt. “Because I’m crazy. I never got to Jay, or Zack, or Madison. Madison was okay, though, I wouldn’t have killed her. I’d make her watch, I would, because she stood by and she let everything happen to me.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup.”

_“Good men sit still and take their punishments like a man should.”_

_“Please, stop,” he whispers, voice hoarse from screaming and shouting and sobbing. He shakes violently when he feels the whip slice across his back, again and again and again –_

_His vision’s blurry around the edges and he feels sleepy, but there’s a hand in his hair and he’s being dragged upward, roughly. His father’s face surrounds his vision, and he’s being shaken, shaken, shaken, violently back and forth, up and down._

_“Stay the fuck awake. Take your punishment like a man.”_

_The whip cuts into his skin three, four, five, six, seven times and he groans, hoarsely, falling limp against the ground like a ragdoll as his father lets go of his hair._

_“I’ll be back for you, bitch.”_

Tyler shudders against Josh’s side. His hand is released, replaced by a warm arm, tight around his shoulder. “Do you think there’s an afterlife?” he whispers, eyes slitting as he thinks of meeting his family again.

“No,” Josh answers immediately, brushing his fingertips against the back of Tyler’s neck. “God, I’m going to hell, if there is.”

“I don’t regret it,” Tyler blurts.

Josh looks at him in confusion. “Don’t regret what?”

“Killing them. I meant to do it,” Tyler admits, meeting Josh’s gaze hollowly. “I meant to do it. They had to stop hurting me somehow.”

Josh knows. He’s seen the scars that litter Tyler’s back and chest, touched over them the numerous times they fucked in narrow closets and bathroom stalls, anywhere they could be alone for five minutes. He’s seen all the marks and the bruises and the burns, self-inflicted or from other means; they’re everywhere, up his forearms and hands and wrists and legs and thighs, his shoulders and his back and his neck, even on his face. He’s not good with words as he is with thinking, so he simply says, “I know.”

“Did you mean it?” Tyler presses. “What you did?”

Josh moves his eyes from a tiny scar above Tyler’s cheekbone to the fence. “Yes.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

Tyler seems pleased. He falls quiet, relaxing back against Josh’s shoulder. “You should’ve seen his face when I came at him. I killed her and he came running, and I shot him in the arm so he wouldn’t be able to fight me.”

Josh has heard this story hundreds of times. He knows every detail. He could recite it from memory. Still, he stays quiet and he listens every single time, because it makes him feel better about what he’s done.

“I took the biggest knife from the kitchen and I stabbed him. I kept pulling it in and out, in and out, and I was crying through the entire thing, until Zack was screaming and Jay was trying to pull me off of him and Madison was calling _them_. But I waited like a good man, because that’s what good men do, they take their punishments like _men_. This is my punishment.”

Tyler draws in a deep breath. “Fucking Jay. All those times he helped Zack hold me down so they could beat on me. I tried to stab him, too, but he ran like a _bitch_. He wasn’t a man. I don’t know what he saw in him. I don’t know why he chose to punish me. I’m a good man. Jay’s not a man, he’s not, I swear. Zack’s no better, either, he’s a bitch, too. God, I hate them.”

Josh can feel the shift in Tyler’s mood almost as if it was his own. He holds his breath.

“What am I doing _here_?” he asks, voice cold. “Here I am, with another man. I let you fuck me, so I’m a disgrace. I’m tainted with sin. Oh, I’m going to hell, for sure, I’m the worst sinner there ever was.”

“Tyler,” Josh grits his teeth. “Fucking me isn’t the worst thing you’ve ever done. You stabbed your father thirty-two times, remember?”

“He’d stab me even more times if he found out I fucked you,” Tyler chuckles, darkly, shoving Josh away from him. Josh tilts himself away, leaning against the wall, waiting for the next change. He’s been doing this too much.

Tyler huffs a sigh, curling in on himself. “We should run away together.”

“What about the fence?” Josh raises an eyebrow, turning his head.

“You know what I mean.”

Josh leans his head against the wall. “Hm,” he considers.

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” Tyler points out. “Quick and easy. Better than anything I’ve ever experienced.”

Josh tucks his head against his knees. “I guess.”

“What do you think they do with all the bodies they execute?” Tyler asks the sidewalk.

Josh closes his eyes. “They probably burn them. Something like that.”

“What do you think execution is like?”

“Better than what your parents did to you,” Josh mutters.

_He’s screaming, he’s screaming, he’s screaming, but they won’t stop. His mother has his arms, sneering down at him. His father has his legs, fingers tucked underneath his waistband, and he’s pulling his jeans off._

_“Give me the knife,” he demands, and he squeezes his eyes shut so he won’t have to see which of his siblings hands it to him. He screams again when the blade digs into his upper thigh, carving words into his skin; he writhes, his skin burning as he tries fruitlessly to twist out of his mother’s grasp. She laughs at him, cold and unforgiving._

_He doesn’t forget that laugh a week later when he points a gun at her forehead and pulls the trigger. It plays on repeat in his head as he drops to the floor and yanks up her shirt, fumbling a small knife out of his pocket. He carves his name into her skin, and his father rushes through the door, eyes wide._

_They go wider when Tyler stands and aims at his left arm. He fires without hesitation and he runs to the kitchen, coming back with a carving knife. He shoots again, at his foot, so he can’t stand, and he climbs on top of his hips, wielding the knife in both hands like a sword._

_“Take your punishment like a man!” he shouts, slamming the handle down before pulling it back out. His father gasps and his blood spurts out of the wound. He tries to push Tyler off, but he stabs him again and again and again – he screams and he cries and he digs the knife into him well past the point of where he dies until Jay tries to wrestle him away._

Tyler snorts out a tiny laugh.

Josh inspects his fingernails, picking his head up to rest back against the wall. “How long have we been here?”

“A long time. Still waiting on my turn, you know,” Tyler hums. “Can you believe there’s people who did worse than me?”

Josh nods without thinking. He watches as the sun slowly dips behind the line of trees, a faded cotton-candy pink mixing with a pastel lilac-blue. Tyler looks at him instead of watching the sun set, and there’s something akin to love and admiration in his eyes.

“I love you,” he announces. Josh smiles, even if he doesn’t believe him.

Tyler’s a monster. Monsters aren’t capable of love.

He’s a monster, too. They all are. That’s why they’re here, waiting for their turn to be executed. It’s a nicer way of saying murdered, he supposes. He pulls himself to his feet, staggering slightly, and Tyler stands with him.

“Ready to go?” Tyler sighs, and Josh responds by grabbing his hand.

They swing their arms as they walk.

“You know what I’ve missed the most?” Tyler asks as his vision of the fence becomes clearer, sharper, more focused.

“No,” Josh says, truthfully.

“I miss my ukulele.”

“You’ll have to play me a song sometime,” Josh squeezes his hand. “If we ever meet again. I love your voice.”

Tyler whistles, and Josh hums, the tune to a song the lyrics he’s long since forgotten.

Dead leaves crunch underneath their feet as they draw closer to the tree line.

There's less than a foot spread out between them and the fence, separating them from their goal.

“Hey,” Tyler stops suddenly, pulling Josh backwards. He turns to him, face blank. “If there is an afterlife, I’ll see you there, won’t I?”

“Sure,” Josh smiles, reaching out to pat his shoulder softly. “Talk to me while we walk.”

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Tyler sighs dreamily. “I’ve been thinking about this for the longest time.”

“Have you?” Josh responds, looking at him curiously.

“Ever since I got here,” Tyler chuckles.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Josh admits. He’s incapable of love because he’s a monster, but he will miss him. If he reached out, his fingers would brush against the chain link, but he knows he'll never get to that point.

“I’ll see you aga –“

Twin gunshots sound in the air before they can even touch the fence.

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥  
> tumblr / blurryfced  
> twitter / blurryfceds


End file.
